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It’s not cricket

It started off something like 15-0, then 69-3 and today it’s 152-5. It’s not England’s latest Test innings against India. It’s the Palestinian/Israeli death count in the Middle East and I must confess I find myself looking out for the latest totals in a similar way I might look out for football scores or the progress of a cricket match.

The dangerous thing about statistics like this is that we can too easily use them to prove an argument or to grab attention but they deflect from the human suffering on both sides. The fact that ‘only’ 5 Israeli’s had died up to a certain point dismisses the shattering effect each of those deaths will have on parents, siblings, sons, daughters and communities as a whole.

The politicians and leaders (on both sides) take ‘strong’ action to show their strength and impress their voters but seemingly do not consider human life as precious as the state of their own grip on power.

I must have heard only a handful of names of those who have died. If their stories were publicised as much as headline grabbing figures then maybe more of us would grasp the terrible human cost to this conflict.